


The Ghost of Christmas Elsewhere

by Whreflections



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: A universe where they have a kid is referenced, Alternate Universes, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Christmas Magic Hannibal style, Heavy Angst, I Cannot Stress that Enough, Kid Fic, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Murder Family, Murder Husbands, Pendulum Vision, but not really, idk how else to tag that, ish, suicide by cop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-11
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-06 03:38:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5401556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whreflections/pseuds/Whreflections
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will Graham dies on a cold street three days before Christmas.  The bureau will call it justice for the lives he's taken in Spain over the last three years with Hannibal Lecter, for all he did before and all he would do if he'd not been stopped, for the man he shot in the throat before four shots took him down.  </p><p>Hannibal will call it hell, if he ever wakes up.  </p><p>Will really didn't expect to still be hanging around to see all this for himself, and he certainly didn't expect to have the chance to see a thousand other ways it could have ended, but that's the reality he's faced with.  Where they go from here is anyone's best guess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. 
> 
> So like...I love Christmas movies, an absurd amount. So I thought hey, I reallyreally want to do a hannigram fic with some kind of Christmas magic element...maybe an alternate universe thing...
> 
> And this is the fucking godawful torturous nightmare my mind immediately came up with, lmao 
> 
> I just. I'm really sorry, X.X (also chapter 2 will be up in a couple days; this was going to be just a oneshot but then I decided it was best done in two parts)
> 
> (All italics quotes/both bold section titles are from Richard Siken's Snow and Dirty Rain...I feel strange using Siken for something other than wincest but when I had the idea for this fic the gold room thing just popped into my head and I had to, lol)

_I would like to meet you all in Heaven.  But there’s a litany of dreams that happens somewhere in the middle._

_-Richard Siken_

**_close your eyes_ **

The pendulum swings, and the street falls silent.  Once, twice, five times until the scene is reset. 

This time, Will isn’t in the middle but off center, staring across a distance of too many feet at himself, bloodied and wild, head tilted up by the defiance that burns in his eyes.  The hand on the gun is steady, certain but full of distaste.  Had he the option he wanted, he wouldn’t have pulled the trigger.  He’d have far preferred to rip out the throats of every uniform they faced with his teeth, a learned skill.  Those that held Hannibal would have lost their hands, first, but this is not a reconstruction of his own desires, and Will lets the thought pass.  In, and out, like breath, like smoke. 

He closes his eyes, falls deeper, feels the pull and weight of restraint. 

“I am proud, and terrified.”  Here, in this space he hasn’t used alone in a goddamn age, his voice seems to echo horribly in ways it shouldn’t, over such open ground.  Will shudders, and refocuses.  “Fear is not an emotion I carry often, but I know its taste.  It coats the back of my throat, and I want to call to him, but I will not give them the satisfaction.  Later, I will wonder if I should have.  If it would have mattered.  Regret is another unwanted delicacy.”

Will’s shoulders drop, reflex response to realization.  “I know too late that he will not let them take him.  We never planned for this, and in that split second I know my failure is twofold.  We never should have come back here, but I should have spoken to him more about this, convinced him capture should it happen didn’t have to be the end.  We could have gone in and come out together, if we played it right, but that’s not a future he sees.  He sees concrete and tests, confinement and separation.  Now that I’ve set him free, his river isn’t enough.  I see it now, for all the good it does me.  I have half a second to grasp the hell I face before he fires.”

Will’s stillness breaks, a dizzying blur of motion as he jerks with a painfully sharp twist to the left.  “They haven’t cuffed me yet; it all happened too fast.  I dislocate the shoulder clipped in the ambush and sweep one guard off his feet, momentarily blind the other with a solid bite to his face.”  Will can taste the blood, the strange spongy quality of the nose he spits out.  Swallowing would be more psychologically effective, but he has neither the breath nor the time. 

Behind him now, the gun fires once.

The heartbeat of hesitation that brings is only enough for him to wheel around, and though his hand clenches hard enough to crush around the throat of the cop at his back, the blow to his neck brings him to his knees.  He’s panting, blood from the man he bit mingling with his own, dripping from his chin.  He is transfixed, dizzied and staring at the rising smoke as the man he loves loses balance with so much force it looks deliberate.  As if he chooses to go down, rather than let them make him.  In a way, it’s true. 

“They fire four times.”  Even in this clinical construction, his voice is hoarse, weighted and raw.  “Someone in the background tries to call them down but there is too much rage here.  I am almost certain the one screaming is Jack.  It does not absolve him.  For his role in this, I tell myself he is already dead.  The truth of that promise is more ambiguous.  One of us is dead; it may well be Jack, could just as easily be me.  I cannot see this new future I am in.  I can’t see anything at all but him.”

Will’s forward motion toward his own body is pitifully short, clipped by the slam of a nightstick at the base of his skull, a knee against his spine as he goes down.  The ache in his head is powerful, consuming, but the violent evisceration he can feel still going on in his chest is stronger still.  He refuses to close his eyes. 

“Someone is screaming, still.  I realize it’s probably me.  I realize…I don’t care.  There are dark spots; my head is swimming.  I know I have a serious concussion.  I remain coherent long enough to hope I won’t wake up.”  Will swallows, lays his bloody cheek to the pavement.  It’s dry and chilled but his eyes are wet, burning, blurring.  He blinks furiously, though the eyes on the fallen body have likely already gone out, unable to look back, unable to feel him looking.  “I’m cold; I taste snow and blood.  I am 11, and 54, and my sister and the man I tried to die for three years ago are bleeding out before my eyes simultaneously.  I can’t remember the last words I said to him.  I do remember that I didn’t kiss him when we got out of the car.  I meant to, but I was distracted.”  He can feel the sudden pain of that memory, overbalanced and made wicked sharp by grief.  He gasps, takes it like a knife between his ribs.  “Everything goes dark.” 

For Will, the darkness lifts, sight and sound returning as the quiet brought by the pendulum lifts.  At least half a dozen cop cars and two fire engines block the road, their swirling red and blue merging eerily with the glow of Christmas lights on either side of the street.  White reindeer, rainbow bulbs on bushes.  A polar bear in a blue sweater, sitting in front of a fake flickering fire. 

To his left, Hannibal’s unconscious form has been lifted from the street, cuffed to a gurney.  They’re still in the process of strapping him down.  His mouth is covered in blood that mostly isn’t his, the hollows beneath his eyes wet with tears that are.  It fills Will with righteous fury to see it, to be forced to watch as no one has the decency to take so much as the corner of a blanket and wipe his face clean.  They shouldn’t see him like this; not these people.  His grief should not be made an indignity, but it will be, and there isn’t a damn thing Will can do about it.

When he played his hand, he didn’t imagine having to stay around and watch Hannibal fold.  He thought…

Well, to be honest, he thought he’d be nothing by now.  They overlap, but he isn’t Hannibal.  He doesn’t believe in God.  He is, however, unmistakably still _something_ , standing invisible in the middle of a crowded street, his body on the pavement a good six feet away.  Jack is crying, too.  His tears slide right off Will like rain, leaving him unmarred.  Let Jack mourn him; he had a chance not to.  All he’d have to have done is not press the issue.  He could have let them go.  He won’t carry the shroud of Jack’s grief, just Hannibal’s.  It’s more than heavy enough.   

*****

In the hospital, Hannibal flickers like a television picture shot through with static.  He is above and beside and beneath his body as often as he’s in it, never far enough in any direction for Will to grasp him…or, perhaps, he simply doesn’t know how.  There is a strange sort of power to being whatever he is now, a low thrum of it that he doesn’t understand though he spends a solid day of frustration trying.  In those hours, he discovers more of what he _can’t_ do than what he can—he can’t touch Hannibal, not here, not like this, and he can’t seem to wake him up.  He can’t touch anything else with any real impact either, though he can sit on a chair and he isn’t falling through the floor.  The lack of conventional logic to his circumstances would fascinate Hannibal, but Will feels trapped and frustrated, begins to wonder with honest dread if he has in fact ended up in hell. 

He slips into his first alteration entirely by accident, like being tilted out of a picture frame for leaning too hard against the edges.  All he knows in the first moment is that he was in the hospital room imagining what might have happened if they’d stayed in Toledo until everything shifts with a strange twist and he’s there, across the room from himself and Hannibal in a villa he knows far better than the back of his hand.  Hannibal is reading a medical journal in bed, and there’s a glass of orange juice on his night stand.  Will is curled beside him, chin propped against Hannibal’s hip, his palm teasing at the slight strip of skin between the waistband of his pajama pants and his shirt.  Will knows this moment, too; he lived it.  He nuzzled that shirt up, kissed over Hannibal’s ribs and asked him if he ever thought about calling in Alana’s debt. 

He tenses in anticipation, but the Will across the room stares at Hannibal longer than he should, opens his mouth, and shuts it.  Sighs, and turns his head until he’s breathing in the direction of Hannibal’s cock, clearly soft still though with the heat of a willing mouth so close the fabric starts to betray a shift. 

“If you were bored, you could’ve said.”  Hannibal’s voice is warm with amusement, though his eyes never leave his pages. 

Will huffs, arches his neck to mouth at the shape just rising into definition, murmurs between open kisses,  “Are you going to keep reading that, or can I blow you now?”

Hannibal drops a hand to the nape of his neck, drags it forward through his curls, back to slip just under the neck of his shirt and play against his spine.  Casual, like petting a dog.  “Yes.”  How he manages to put so much wry entertainment and affection into such a short word Will really isn’t sure, but his counterpart on the bed is laughing, calling him a bastard and pulling Hannibal’s pants down to take him into his mouth anyway.  It’s awhile before he concedes and puts the journal down, but from across the room Will can see the moment he stops reading, his eyes hot and half open, his breath still even but shallow. 

Will keeps watching, the hitch in his chest a strange mixture of lust and jealousy and pain and something heavier that wavers between hope and horrified regret.  He watches as they make love, lazy at first until Hannibal feels the full measure of Will’s restlessness and responds, pushes him hard enough that when it’s over he’s limp and panting.  They’ve hardly spoken a word, but Hannibal’s concern is in the hand he presses to Will’s stomach to feel its rise and fall, Will’s reassurance in the close of his eyes, the tilt of his head to bare his throat.  He is content, in that moment. 

The question Will was still half expecting doesn’t come, not then and not even after time has passed, the day stretching forward.  Later, the tension settles into his alter ego’s shoulders again as he chops jalapenos in the kitchen.  Hannibal seeks it out with his hands, kneads at knotted muscle until Will begins to unravel beneath his touch.  From his vantage point as an outsider, Will can see the flash of worry in Hannibal’s eyes, how quick he hides it when the man in his arms glances back at him. 

“You know, I can only help you so much if you won’t tell me what’s troubling you.” 

Will’s laughter is soft, willingly conceding.  “That obvious, huh?” 

“More or less.”  Hannibal’s hands flex, his eyes closing as he nuzzles into Will’s curls.  “If there’s something—“

“You haven’t done anything; it’s…”  Knowing himself as he does, Will can hear his own frustration.  He doesn’t know exactly when this place started to hem him in, and he hates it, feels ridiculous for it when he has nothing to complain about, when nothing’s gone wrong and he can’t even properly name what it is he feels.  “I don’t know.  I feel like I’m going stir crazy; it’ll pass.”

Hannibal calculates; Will can almost see the plans shifting and shuffling in his head, discarding ones that don’t quite appeal to him until he lands on one that does.  He shifts his arms to Will’s waist, wrapping them warm but loose around him as he murmurs against the shell of his ear.  “Prague is lovely in the winter.  There is much I would love to show you; the premiere of _Don Giovanni_ was held there in a theater still open today.” 

Will knows this is an offer he’ll agree to, that he is likely already trying to convince himself a change of scenery will be enough, but he knows, too, that Hannibal isn’t done.  He can feel his hesitation from across the room. 

“We could stay long enough to enjoy the Christmas markets.  Perhaps even send our dear Uncle Jack a card.”  _There_ it is, the more that he wants, that Hannibal even now isn’t certain he should offer.  “It’s prudent to remain conservative close to home, but vacations are meant for indulgence.  Or, if you’d rather not return to Toledo we could—“

The knife falls to the cutting board, but Will doesn’t even bother to turn to kiss him properly, just reaches back to grip tight at his hair and cranes his neck back, meeting in the middle.  He’s eager, relief he didn’t entirely anticipate bleeding out thick from every suddenly eased inch of muscle and bone.  It’s in his voice when he speaks, breathless, his lips still brushing Hannibal’s. 

“Prague does sound lovely.”

In the corner, Will wonders if either of them would hear him if he screamed. 

*****

Any action once taken is easier repeated, and Will is a quick learner.  Now that he knows he isn’t constrained by material matters like dimension and time, he can go anywhere he likes, see anything he chooses.  If every choice made creates a world of his own, he could spend a million years searching out worlds where they reach the end of this year alive and together, where they found each other sooner, hurt each other less.  He could watch them fall in love a thousand times and never be finished, never grow tired of it, and never feel entirely sated either.  Wherever he goes, _his_ Hannibal is always the shadow behind him, calling Will back so he can watch him hover in-between.  Never close enough to this limbo he’s in to touch, never far enough away to see him wake. 

When he can bear the distance, he spends his time meandering, browsing through possibilities like he would through a book, lives falling like thumbed pages through his fingers until he makes the choice to stop and look, to fully take a certain moment in, to sometimes chase back further to see how they reached it. 

_Flip_

Florence, a narrow old house with a courtyard that fills with sunlight. 

Abigail started a garden there, but she’s discovered she’s not really so good with plants.  Hannibal’s herbs are slowly gaining ground on her flowers, a quiet battle Will watches with good natured amusement, non-partisan.  Hannibal is teaching them both Italian, but though Will is the better student Abigail puts it to more use.  She’s taking classes, exploring possibilities.  Fishing, in every way she can.  In the old cellar Hannibal guides her hand as she slits a throat, removes a heart. 

When she is present Will never partakes, no matter how much disdain he carries for the prey in their clutches, no matter how stunning Hannibal looks with blood speckling his forearms where he’s rolled up his shirt.  Will’s kills are wild, always with an edge of danger, always the crackle of blood lust.  He has never hidden what he and Hannibal are now from her and never would, and he knows she’s more than clever enough to know that when he and Hannibal hunt together the experience leaves him battered and bruised but comfortable in his skin in a way that lasts for days.  He has no doubts that she knows much, but there’s a difference in her knowing their kills are foreplay and seeing that wildness in him unleashed.  The animal glint in his eyes as he bore his victim to the ground would terrify her—or it wouldn’t, and he’s not sure which for him would be worse. 

It’s better all-around to stand aside, to watch her learn. 

When she removes her first lungs she soaks in Hannibal’s praise like water on parched ground, but it’s Will she goes to when she’s finished, Will’s hands she rests her bloody ones in to show him they’re not shaking.  He can feel her pride.  She feels brave, capable, treasured. 

“Did you see, dad?  No hesitation marks.  Hannibal said I’m almost as good as he was with a scalpel at my age.” 

He twitches because he still isn’t used to it, because hearing that word from her lips is something he both craves and dreads, but she has put Hobbs behind her by her assertion, and it’s them she wants, it’s Will she’s chosen to bear that title.  If he’s to teach her her choices matter, he can hardly fail to let her use it. 

Will wraps her up in his arms, pulls her in close and lets her grip bloody his shirt, kisses her forehead.  “I saw.  It was beautiful.” 

Over Abigail’s shoulder he meets Hannibal’s eyes across the room, glimmering in the low light, devouring Will whole. 

_Flip_

Outside of Zurich, a house so stunning it rivals Baltimore. 

They have separate rooms, separate beds, but those are the final lines between them.  They kill together, cook together.  They have three dogs together, all rescues, though only two found by Will.  The third was a gift from Hannibal, a purebred German Shepherd.  He’d driven hours to get her from her foster home, all for the sake of seeing Will’s eyes light up.  He hadn’t had a shepherd since his earliest days on the force down in New Orleans. 

There is no lack of love in this house, and it could easily be enough—elsewhere it is, and Will has seen one of those iterations of this home too, seen himself curl into Hannibal’s side by the fire, clothed and chaste and utterly in love.  Eventually, those two go on to share a bed, to kiss in the aftermath of hunts and warm with wine and sometimes, rarely, while Hannibal takes himself in hand, but try as he might Will never feels the physical draw to him he sometimes wishes he did.  Hannibal never minds.  Will never touches a woman again, but Hannibal pays extravagant amounts of money here and there for strippers who put on an excellent show without ever laying a hand on what’s his.  Never the same woman twice, but every one of them to Will’s tastes.  Will never minds the naked hunger in Hannibal’s eyes as he watches.

In _this_ world, though, Will’s desires are more malleable than he initially knows, and Hannibal less willing to surrender this final piece without a solid fight.  The man he brings home is the product of careful selection, a closer mirror of his desires than even Dimmond ever was.  Younger than Will, soft brown curls, bright blue eyes.  Hannibal picks him up at the orchestra, and Will can bear the two of them drinking good bourbon and discussing Swiss art in Hannibal’s study.  He can even bear Hannibal taking him upstairs, though his nerves start to fray the longer they stay.  Cries that he knows are Hannibal’s reach him all the way down the hall, and it feels like having his skin flayed to think he’s in there letting a stranger fuck him, that he’s moaning like a goddamn cat in heat for some bastard who’d probably run screaming if he knew the truth.

It’s a strange sensation, to have to question his sexuality due directly to the sudden welling urge to get up, march down the hall, shove open the door and snap the man’s neck.  He could do it without a word, turn around and walk out and lock himself in his room for the rest of the night.  It’d serve Hannibal right to have to deal with the body himself without having even gotten off first. 

He’s honestly not sure what stops him—the vaguely rational train of thought that tells him not to rise to the bait, to wait and consider the questions this has uncovered when he’s more clearheaded, or the wry voice that points out there’s probably no better way to ensure Hannibal gets off than to snap a man’s neck in the middle of sex out of jealousy.  He’s too good of a dog trainer not to know this isn’t the type of behavior he wants to reward. 

He almost makes it, too.  He holds out even after they fall quiet, even after realizing that Hannibal’s going to let him spend the night.  That fresh outrage drives him up for the Tennessee whiskey he keeps stashed in the desk where he ties his flies, but he swallows it down with the drink and waits.  He doesn’t sleep, but he manages, has even calmed down enough to begin to picture sitting Hannibal down and talking about this rationally. 

Breakfast does him in.  It’d be hilariously nonsensical to anyone who didn’t know Hannibal that _this_ is his breaking point, but it’s absolutely an insult he won’t bear.  He could handle Hannibal fucking the son of a bitch as a way to make his point, but he draws the line at cooking for him in their kitchen. 

The guy’s leaning against the fridge watching Hannibal cook bacon when Will comes downstairs, and he puts an end to it without preamble.  He pads in barefoot to minimize his approach, cuts his throat a single deep slice and shoves him forward with a little more violence than needed, breath heavy with rage rather than exertion as he watches blood spread across the tile.  If Will was able, he’d be purring. 

“That’s going to be impossible to get out of the grout.”  Hannibal’s voice is deliberately mild, but Will can feel  his faintly smug ecstasy, lapping like waves at his ankles.  He hates it, loves it, is fucking infuriated by it and so damn aroused he can hardly breathe.

He exhales sharply, drags his eyes up to take Hannibal in.  He looks soft and warm, his v-neck sweater a pale lavender, a strip of skin bared between it and his pajama pants.  Will is going to wreck him.    

_Flip_

The outskirts of Hermosillo, an old ranch house with sun baked land.

Will has more dogs here than any other life of theirs he’s seen.  Fourteen at highest count, all former street dogs, all thriving on a diet Hannibal helps him construct.  It’s surprising, really, how often they _don’t_ eat people.  They can’t hunt all the time and the choicest cuts go to their own table; the dogs mostly end up with beef and turkey, cuts of fresh fish sometimes when Will has it. 

In a future Will can’t bring himself to look closely at, this place goes up in a blaze of fire when the bureau finds it.  In _this_ one, the outsider it takes in doesn’t bring the lick of flame but the incomparable echo of a child’s laughter.  Worlds apart, those two forces, but both have transformative power.  It’s unlikely the two of them survive the first, but the second…

They find him after a kill, a bundle sold to pay a debt.  He is very small, sick and thin, weak when he pushes against Hannibal’s chest.   There are a hundred ways his story could go from here, but this Hannibal looks down at him and remembers the orphanage and teacups he can’t repair, and he takes him home. 

Will doesn’t balk for long.

Sebastian’s potential spills out into dozens of worlds like the sprawl of ivy and Will has seen a few and not enough—the way Hannibal’s hand fits against the back of his neck in comfort and pride when he kills a man for a disparaging comment about his fathers, in perfect harmony on the back of a horse winning gold for Mexico, cuffed to table in Dallas with Will’s defiance in his eyes and a tilt to his head that’s all Hannibal as an older Jack Crawford circles him.

Those later years very widely, but the first blur together, and it’s there Will lingers.  Hannibal has a patience for the boy that makes him ache, brings incongruous dizziness to a form that no longer needs to breathe.  He brings him into the kitchen, teaches him to make and wrap fresh tamales, to bake cakes for Will’s birthday.  He has a talent for nurturing his inherent thirst for knowledge without overloading it, and for the first time Will properly sees the Hannibal that didn’t come into full focus for him in Lithuania—Mischa’s brother with his son on his lap, reading him Grimm’s original bloody Cinderella in German. 

Both Wills watch from the doorway, and his stomach clenches hard when Hannibal looks up and smiles and he knows it isn’t for him, not really. 

“Would you like to join us?  I could start over.”  The humor in Hannibal’s voice betrays how well he knows the answer on the way, but he asks all the same.

“No need to start over on my account; I do better if I don’t try to pick out the five words I know.”  It’s an obvious exaggeration, one he’s made before, but Sebastian still giggles, and Hannibal still shakes his head with him, like sharing a secret. 

“What will we do with him, Seb?  We can’t take him to Munich with us at this rate.”

Sebastian imparts the sage wisdom that he’ll never get better if he doesn’t listen, so they both do, the Will who belongs settling on top of the covers with his arm around his boy and his head on Hannibal’s shoulder and the one who doesn’t still at the door, listening and staring and wondering what on earth he could have done different to deserve a moment like this. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jafsd;lk posting this feels triumphant lol 
> 
> So...remember how I said this was finished, and I'd post the second half in two days? What that really meant was, I thought it was almost finished, and then I changed my mind pretty much entirely about how I was going to go about writing this second half. The ending is basically the ONLY thing that remained the same...and the final scene was the one I hadn't written yet. *facepalm*
> 
> Even so, given that I wrote the first half in like two days I thought I'd do a quick rewrite and this would be up in maaaybe three...but not long after starting on it I was hit with an inexplicable case of writer's block and I just could. not. No matter how hard I tried I was averaging 400 words a day and loathing/changing most of them and it was driving me batshit insane...but here's the good news. Usually at that point, I get frustrated and jump to a new/another fandom I can write from without wanting to pull my hair out. But I didn't. I kept trying, every day, and I finished it...I don't know how happy I am with it right at this moment, but I finished it, lmao 
> 
> Point being, I think my dedication to hannigram is making me a better author. Point also being, I am sorry this is late but writing it turned into a far larger undertaking than expected and I really hope you guys enjoy it, lol

**_fall toward me_ **

The scents of the hospital come before the sounds.  Alcohol, imitation citrus in the cleaner, stale blood, worse coffee.  The sounds drift in after, increasing, like the seep of water through fabric that grows suddenly heavy.   He catches the beeps and whirrs of machinery, the sound of shoes in the hall, the quiet click of doors.  Those facts are simple, an easy gathering of information his mind stubbornly lingers on as he struggles to wake, and that tells him even before his memory returns that his preoccupation is likely hiding something.    The throb at the base of his skull should be intense, he knows, because the strike was—

His eyes snap open as the memory returns in all its jumbled horror, but the sight before him is no less confusing.  Will leans against the window at the foot of his bed, framed against the dark beyond.  He’s beautiful, pristine, looks for all the world like he stepped out their room back in Toledo partway through undressing from a night at the theater.  Crisp white shirt open at the collar, sleeves rolled up to bare his arms.  Just a little rumpled, like Hannibal has already pushed him against the closet door and kissed him.

Hannibal closes his eyes, swallows hard.  He is dead, or this is dream.  There’s no question which he’d prefer. 

“I know you can see me, Hannibal.  It’s alright.”  It isn’t, it absolutely isn’t, but Will’s voice is calm, coaxing, the way he talks to a stray he wants to bring home.  Hannibal should be more annoyed by that than he is. 

When he opens his eyes, Will is, in fact, still there—arms crossed over his chest, still leaning back, a fond smile on his face that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.  There’s far too much sadness there.  It’s all Hannibal can do to say his name, to make it a question.  His throat should be scratchy with disuse, dry at the least, but it comes out smooth. 

Will’s smile widens, but it still doesn’t touch his eyes.  “Yeah.  I’m here.  I wasn’t sure I’d get a chance to talk to you like this; you’ve been in and out a couple days.”  Will ducks his head, laughing at something unknown.  “Seems longer.  I’ve been in and out, too; all over the place.”  His eyes must light up, must show some sign of hope at that because Will’s smile vanishes, his head shaking so quick and firm Hannibal feels sick.  “No, no it’s—“ Will pushes forward, takes a step toward him so small it hardly counts.  “It’s not like that.  I wish it was, but I’m…my state is already determined, whatever that may eventually mean.” 

“And mine isn’t?”

“Not yet.  See?”

He follows Will’s line of vision to the monitor beside him, the steady blip of his heart.  It shouldn’t be so measured, not with Will so impossibly present, not with the memory of the scene in the street still clawing behind his eyes.  He knows that, and still it’s a little startling to sit up to take his pulse by hand and realize that his arm both moves and stays in place, that he has no pulse to take.  He rises to the edge of the bed, feels the lightness in his limbs, the strange disconnect as he sits up and leaves his body behind.  In lieu of the gown that covers his body on the bed, he’s wearing the clothes he had in the street, his shirt a soft steel grey he rolls up to bare his arms, wondering.  They’re clean, and the pull in his shoulder is gone.  Nothing hurts but the incessant pain in his chest that reminds him whatever manifestation of his own inner conflict he’s talking to, it can’t be Will.  He knows what happened to Will. 

Despite the effort it takes, he forces himself to look over at Will again.  It’s freshly surprising that he’s still there, expectant and so appealingly whole.  “My ability to conjure an image of you has improved it seems, but as a whole you defy replication.  I may not be able to accurately portray you, but for all that you surprise me I know you well enough to recognize when those attempts go wrong.” 

“And where have I, ‘gone wrong’?”  The dry humor in his voice is all Will, even the faint lift of his eyebrows as he paces closer.  “What about me seems unreal to you, outside the obvious matter of our circumstances?”

Unwilling to hold his mental imposter’s gaze, Hannibal turns away.  In his mind, the street flashes again.  Four solid shots.  The sudden, heavy way he’d fallen.  He couldn’t have suffered much, if at all.  The desire is in him to consider that a small mercy, but he can’t muster the feeling.  Every ounce of emotional energy he has is tied up already, either in the weight of consuming grief or the slower burn of furious hurt that rests beneath it.  It’s that he tastes now, driving his words up and out. 

“You said you wished your state was not yet determined.  That proves you a product of my mind, not a final projection of his.  He made his wishes indisputably clear.” 

“I’m not infallible, you know.  You don’t have a monopoly on disastrous mistakes, rash decisions.”  Will crosses in front of his line of vision, settles into the empty chair beside the bed.  Even the way he leans forward feels like Will, the faint shake of his head.  “You’ve broken your share of teacups.  This one’s on me.” 

He tries to imagine Will’s body rising from the street, shots reversing, the gun in his hand placed on the ground before it could ever be fired. 

“Hannibal.” 

It’s hard to say which hurts more, the use of his name or the care in the voice that wraps around it.  It’s probably worth analyzing that even inside his own head Hannibal won’t allow himself to flinch.  Not too openly, at least, but it’s there in the way he blinks, swallows without the need to swallow. 

“I know it’s…arguably pointless and maybe even cruel to tell you I regret it now, but I do, and you deserve to know it.  I made a mistake.  There’s no apology I can give you that covers what I’ve done.  It’s too big.  I know you’re angry, and you have every right to be, but I can promise you you’ll forgive me long before I forgive myself.”

At the time, it all happened too fast for him to be angry at anyone but himself and the men they faced.  Even now, his anger at Will is wounded, hot, but it feels like the curl of smoke.  It wouldn’t hold in a strong wind, and if he was certain he had Will before him he could breathe through it, wave it away.  He knew how deeply Will hated not only imprisonment but the uniquely intrusive nature of psychiatric imprisonment, knew that he was struggling with a restlessness Hannibal couldn’t quite classify.  There were signs of danger, half a dozen at least, and if he’d heeded any one of them and worked harder to dissuade Will from walking into such a hazardous situation this never would have happened.  It’s hard to blame Will when the places inside him where his own guilt rests prickle insistently, demanding to be felt.  Harder, when he misses him so desperately.

Hannibal catches Will’s gaze, wonders briefly if he looks as lost as he feels.  The flex of Will’s hands where he has them clasped together in the space between them tells him that yes, he must.  “I knew you were unhappy.  I preferred not to probe that issue too deeply, to avoid finding out it was with me.” 

“I wasn’t unhappy.”  He shifts an inch closer, leans onto his knees a little harder.  His eyes well, bright with pain, made almost sharp beneath by determination.  “I wasn’t entirely sure what was wrong with me either, but I wasn’t unhappy with you.  I wanted more, not less.”  He rises before Hannibal can open his mouth, scrubs a hand over the stubble on his chin and paces closer to the end of the bed.  “There are things I’d like to show you, if you’d let me.  Will you come with me?”

“You know that I will.”   Anywhere, anywhere at all.  Will’s words are still spinning around in his head, merging and separating in the search to find truth within them he can accept.  Even if this Will is a construct of his mind, he may carry insight Hannibal gleaned but had yet to fully understand, a final attempt at analysis by a mind that has the time now to consider it.  His unreality may not negate his ability to be honest.  Alternatively, Hannibal’s pain could have permeated everything in his head, including this reconstruction.  Will’s regret may in fact be Hannibal’s. 

The lurch in his silent chest as he rises and sees the faint curve of Will’s smile reminds him that there is, really, a third option—everything is exactly what it seems.  He is balanced on the precipice between death and return to his battered body, and Will has come to stand with him on that narrow ledge in-between.  It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. 

Hannibal reaches for his hand, all instinct and familiarity after three years together, only to draw up short when Will steps back.  There’s regret in the cock of his head, the hard squeeze of his fingers into a fist Hannibal catches before his hands are shoved in his pockets. 

“Sorry.  I just think it’s…probably best if you don’t touch me.  I don’t know exactly how this works, but I haven’t been able to lay a hand on you since you got here.  I doubt it’d mean anything good if you do it now.” 

Ah.  Reflexive, Hannibal glances back at his own body, at the lines in perfect repetition on a bright screen.  “Participation.  The act of choosing a side.”

“Something like that.” 

“On the other hand, if you are merely a coma dream—“

“Then you could do what you want, unless I’m the projection of the part of your mind that wants to live.”  From the corner of his eye, Hannibal can see Will’s mouth turn up at the edge, his eyes warm and touched with bitter humor.  “Suicide is the enemy, after all.  I could be a symbol you’ve given yourself.  Take my hand, and you give up.”

Nothing about the prospect sounds so imposing.  Not half so much, at least, as life without Will would be.  He’s tempted to say as much, but he can feel Will’s vague exasperation, see it in the suddenly tighter, higher line of his shoulders. 

“Just come with me, Hannibal.  You need to see this.”  He blinks, moves with the mockery of breath he doesn’t need.  “ _I_ need you to see it.” 

He’s barely nodded with Will turns, steps, and everything changes. 

There’s a bizarre twisting sensation between his shoulders, a wavy blur to his vision like the turn of a page.  It’s over as quick as it began and the hospital room is gone, utterly.  In its place is a bustling market, the sky dark overhead, stars dim beyond the overwhelming gleam of city lights.  There’s an enormous Christmas tree not far down to the left, lights draped like glittery spider webs through every bare limbed tree in the square and down the streets as far as the eye can see.  The architecture in the buildings that surround the sea of red tents is unmistakable.   

“Do you know where we are?”

Will’s voice jolts him out of taking it all in and he nods, still distracted as he falls into step with Will, weaving silent and insubstantial through the crowds.  “Prague.  Their Christmas markets are magnificent enough to rival the traditional German markets, and I prefer the atmosphere.  The city has a rich history.” To the right, a man is selling toasted almonds.  The scent wafting from the filled paper bags is almost enough for Hannibal to taste them.  He turns his head, jaw clenched against sudden hurt.  He would have fed the first to Will with his hands, unselfconscious.  Will would have rolled his eyes, muttered and taken them, likely nicked the edge of Hannibal’s thumb with his teeth.  “I wanted to bring you here.”  He manages to keep it steady, but his voice sounds scraped raw, too thin.  “I had so much left to show you.” 

“I know.  I’ve seen quite a few of those places, now.  Given half a chance, you’ll take me around the world.”  There’s a strange tilt to Will’s words, a resigned wistfulness.  He clears his throat when Hannibal looks at him, his face carefully blank as he jerks his chin forward.  It’s easier, apparently, to refuse the question in Hannibal’s eyes and point out—

Themselves, arm in arm, sipping mulled wine and looking over a display of intricate nutcrackers.  He’s not yet close enough to hear, but there seems to be debate over one in the back, painted black and red and finely carved, silver glitter on his sword.  Will keeps his hold on Hannibal even when he shifts forward a little to gesture at another, gold and green and white. 

It’s all so surreal Hannibal feels absurdly, ineffectively dizzy. 

Will isn’t ruffled.  He comes as close to Hannibal as he dares, their shoulders almost brushing as he guides them forward another step, inching towards the couple they might have been.  “I never mentioned Alana, in this world, but you knew I was restless.  You suggested we come here, stay until Christmas.  Enjoy the markets, and leave a present for Jack.”  Will glances at him, and even in that brief glimpse Hannibal can see that the honesty in his eyes is pained.  “That’s all I wanted, you know.  I hadn’t been able to put a name to it, but I wanted to do something with you that was bigger than killing few and far between low grade assholes who wouldn’t be missed and destroying the evidence.  I was tired of being careful.  I think I was afraid of what we might do to each other if life got too simple.” 

“I wasn’t.”  He’d been handling simple remarkably well, honestly.  He had Will, and all the time he wanted to revel in him.  Their occasional hunts _had_ carried more constraints than he preferred, but it was a minor inconvenience compared to how heavily Will tipped his scales.  As happy as he was, he’d have been content to carry on as they were for years yet. 

“You’re incredibly patient, and probably a little too optimistic.  Either way, it’s how I felt.  I fell in love with the Chesapeake Ripper.  I wanted to make art with you, not just leave a string of unexplained disappearances.” 

Ahead of them, Hannibal seems to be gaining ground in the nutcracker debate.  Will even lets go of him to pick up the black and red, turning it over in his hand. 

“You wanted a grand gesture, and what could be more grand than a triumphant return to collect on an old debt, prove that we were in fact still active and dangerous?”  This much, he has already figured out.  He had time enough in the planning to see at least some measure of what Will was wanting. 

“A grand enough gesture that I was willing to overlook the plans I’d had to convince you to leave them alone.”  The regret in Will’s voice is thick, palpable.  “I may have lost my compassion for Alana after the way she treated both of us at the farm and after, but Margot’s been through enough.  So long as she still loved Alana, I intended to let her keep her.” 

“And I had no trouble allowing her to.  As I said—“

“You were happy laying low; I know.  I know.”  Will rakes his fingers through hair already mussed, picks up his slow crawl toward the stall and shifts out of step from Hannibal in doing it.  Ahead of them, this Hannibal who succeeded where he failed is buying both nutcrackers.  His eyes when they meet Will’s as he collects his bag and turns to carry on are vividly bright. 

“I was.”  Hannibal murmurs, picks up his pace to fall in step with Will again.  They’re close, now, enough that they could listen in if they wanted, if there was anything to hear.  At the moment, the pair is silent, nursing at their wine, brushing against each other with the familiarity of lovers as they walk.  “But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have been thrilled to make a Ripper kill with you.  Or, something else entirely.  A creature of our own making.”  His gaze shifts back to Will, the barest hint of admonishment in his tone.  “Happiness in one state does not preclude happiness in another.  You had only to ask.”

“And I asked the wrong question.  Or, a bearable one with poor execution.”  Will sighs, the rounding of his shoulders pronounced.  “I haven’t had the heart to look see if there’s somewhere we managed it.  It’s too tempting to come to places like this, see what would have happened if I made better choices.”

Before them, Hannibal leans in, whispers something in his Will’s ear that earns him a convulsive clutch at the front of his coat, a kiss to his cheek.  Watching, Hannibal would swear the skin of his own feels so suddenly cold it burns.  “They’re going to make their kill tonight.”  He needs no question there; he can see it.  It’s in the vague glitter he caught in his own eyes when he turned from the market stall, the way Will touches him more than he needs to as he leans in, stroking along the line of his jaw as he fixes his scarf, leaning his head against his shoulder.  They are feeding off each other, in love and in sync and gearing toward an edge of readiness he would recognize anywhere, now that he’s lived it. 

At his side, he hears Will’s hum of agreement.  “In a few hours.  They take two, stage their own rendition of the nutcracker’s battle with the rat king.  By the time Jack gets here the scene itself has been dismantled but there were enough pictures taken that he doesn’t miss much.  They’re long gone by then, off to the Philippines to give their trail time to cool before they head home.  They spend Christmas day holed up in their hotel room.  You don’t even cook.”

“Under the circumstances, room service seems a worthwhile concession.”  He can’t help the strain in his voice, not with the scene all too easy to picture.  Will is never more glorious than when he’s comfortable in his own skin, and when they do it right, as they did with dragon, the act of killing together settles him.  Centers him, draws him down to his bones.  He can imagine that hotel room, the scent of the ocean drifting through open windows, Will arching underneath him. 

“See?”  There’s some minute measure of satisfaction in the fact that Will’s voice is strained, too.  “You weren’t as angry at me as you should be.  I had to show you.  We could’ve done better, if I hadn’t been so impatient.  We could be here.”

He _should_ have plenty of anger, but it’s no easier to grasp now than it was when they came here.  It’s elusive, a shifting blur layered beneath feelings that command much more of his attention.  He tips his head in vague concession.  “Here, or imprisoned, or still in Toledo.  We could be a hundred places, and I’d assume we are by the way you spoke of other cities you’ve seen.  There is more you’ve found in watching than the desire to punish yourself, if you’ve been elsewhere.  If not, you’d have stayed here, or searched out what your future might have been if you’d laid the gun down.” 

“More than a hundred, I’m sure.  Everything I’ve seen is…a grain of sand.  I’ve only spent time looking into the ones that turn out like this.”

In the street ahead, this Will that looks so like his own is laughing, his hair just long enough that curls spill into his eyes when he ducks his head.  He is bathed in the light from the closest Christmas tree, a glow that gives him color and life, bolsters the sparkle in his eyes.  He will be fierce, tonight, his cuts deep.  When he kisses Hannibal, he’ll leave blood on his skin.  Hannibal doesn’t have to have seen it; he knows.

“While I can certainly see the potential for such observations as self-flagellation, that isn’t all you see, Will.  You didn’t bring me here to punish yourself; you know me too well to believe you can make angry enough at your abandonment to want to live without you.” 

Will’s huff is soft, pained but unsurprised.  From the corner of his eye, Hannibal can see him nod once.  “I do.  We aren’t stopping here.”  He looks to Will in time to see him straighten, standing to his full height.  “Come on.  This might be easier if you close your eyes.” 

He doesn’t. 

 _Flip_. 

The sensation remains strange, but it’s no more jarring that the first, an odd tunneling feeling in his chest and a blurring in his vision that leaves him standing in the house in Wolf Trap, the living room dark but for the low burn of the heater.  There’s light spilling in from the kitchen, though, and the sound of a dog slamming at the back door, a sudden scuffle that follows. 

Will is silent, merely holds a hand out to encourage him to investigate, and so he does.  In the kitchen, this new Will is panting, wide eyed, dropping the knife he held in favor of gripping Hannibal’s sweater in both hands, white knuckled.  Hannibal, in contrast, has allowed himself to be pressed to the counter with utter ease, muscles lax, smile indulgent.  He’s looking at Will like a man dazzled by his good fortune.  He’s not seen it from the outside before, but Hannibal knows how it feels, the set of muscle, the softening around his eyes. 

“Jesus Christ; I could’ve _killed_ you!”

“It’s not as if you came home to find me creeping around in the dark.  You’d have had to intend to.”  His amusement bleeds out around him, an added current beneath the adoration that drives him to lift his arms, to settle them with aching slowness around the man pressed against him so he might pull him closer.  At the sight of himself nuzzling into Will’s hair and breathing him in, Hannibal’s lungs burn in sympathy.  Here, in this place, he will smell of terrible aftershave faded from a long day, traces of his classroom or wherever Jack has taken him, and beneath it himself, always. 

Will lets himself be held, becomes more and more an active participate as his shock fades.  His grip shifts, arms wrapping firm around Hannibal’s waist, ear pressed against his chest.  It’s oddly comforting, to see that here in this place he understands little of, Will is still the man he knows, still fits against him in much the same way as _his_ Will often does.  There is comfort in symmetry. 

“This is…this is _insane_ ; you can’t be here, you—“

“We are safe enough.  If there are still eyes in the woods, rest assured that I have my own.”  His hand slides higher, cups the back of Will’s neck with fragile possession.  “As you said, the holidays are a time for family.  Where else should I be, Will, but with mine?”

Will’s laughter is ragged, muffled and wet.  Hannibal only holds him tighter. 

“I promised I would come for you when it was time.  I thought we might spend Christmas here, and leave before the New Year.  You can tell Jack you’re taking a trip.  If he expects your departure, it will give us some time at least before he misses you.  We could leave sooner if you like, but it’s appalling that you’ve never had a proper Christmas dinner.  I’ve made a list of all we’d need, if you—“

The hum of surprise he makes under Will’s kiss is as genuine as it is pleased, the flex of his hand tight as his fingers tangle rough in Will’s hair.  Will kisses him with shocky desperation, the stunning duality of tender violence thrumming through him as he claws at Hannibal’s neck hard enough to leave lines that he pets at after, soothed by the evidence that reminds him this moment is real.  They aren’t going to make it to Will’s bed; that much is clear.  The wassail he can smell steaming in the pot on the stove will probably be ruined by being neglected at too high a temperature.  There is no doubt whatsoever in Hannibal’s mind that there isn’t a version of him in any universe that would care under these circumstances, not a damn bit. 

“Do they make it?”  He raises his voice just a little, loud enough to carry though he’s sure it isn’t necessary. He can feel Will behind him, silent and rapt.

“Yes.”  The floor doesn’t creak under his steps like it should, but his familiarity with this house is still there in the way he moves in it, the way he carries himself to the table to lean and watch.  The display before them is one he’s seen, clearly; Will’s eyes are fixed on Hannibal instead.  “Chiyoh has already proved herself a capable guardian but in this one, they don’t even need her help.  It’s two years past Muskrat Farm; Jack’s not having him watched anymore.  He has no idea about the phones Will keeps, the letters he exchanges.  He’s been careful; he keeps nothing, though he wants to.”  Will’s smile is slight, there and gone all too quickly.  “He stood over the fire one night for so long with a drawing that I was almost sure he’d keep it, but in the end he got rid of that one too.” 

“I assume you saw the subject of this drawing.”

“I did, and I recognized it instantly.  I’ve seen a remarkably similar one with my own eyes.  It was here, the way I looked at you before you snapped Mason’s neck.  You remember.” 

“Vividly.  You were enjoying yourself.  To that point, I had rarely seen such an unfiltered glimpse of you.  It was exhilarating.” 

The sound of a low moan he’d know anywhere brings Hannibal’s eyes back to the pair up against the counter in time to see that Hannibal has lifted Will onto it and stands between his legs, hands kneading at Will’s thighs.  They are still kissing furiously, their breaths wet and ragged.  It’s interesting, how slight the burn of jealousy is in his chest.  It’s present, of course it is, but this isn’t his Will.  It’s not even as close to him as the one from the market.  The jealously that he has in him, it’s not from any desire to step in and take this Hannibal’s place, but rather the desire for all the time that stretches out before these two, all the opportunity. 

Hannibal drifts over to lean at Will’s side against the table, a careful centimeter or so between them.  “Is this another teacup you feel you dropped, Will?” 

“One I didn’t even know I held, at the time.  It wasn’t an option I considered, though I can’t say pieces of it didn’t drift through my mind after the fact.”  Will watches them now, something softer at the corners of his eyes at the sight of Hannibal’s hands sliding up a shirt he probably remembers wearing.  “They had sex, after the farm.  Given that change Hannibal felt secure enough in the ties that bound them to leave even though Will couldn’t give him a straight answer on what he wanted.  It was all too much, too soon to decide.  He did manage to make up his mind not long after that, but Hannibal’s been stringing him along until he wants it desperately.  I can’t imagine that shocks you.” 

“I can’t say it’s the move I would have chosen, but I can see the appeal.”  So clearly, in fact, that his chest aches.  He can imagine the stacks of letters they must have exchanged in those intervening years, the phone calls they’ve made.  He wonders how many nights Will has woken from a nightmare and called to hear his voice, an old terror made safe.  The tilt at the corner of his lips would be a smile with a little more effort, but he doesn’t quite have it in him.  He turns his head toward Will, eyes downcast as his voice drops conspiratorially.  “He must have done a decent job of it.  I can’t argue with his results.”  Not when this Will is now shirtless on the counter, his legs hooked around Hannibal’s waist to hold him in close.    From beside him, Will’s laughter is so warm that for a second, almost two, the clench in Hannibal’s chest loosens enough that he feels almost content. 

“We’ll leave them to his results.”  Will turns toward him, so close to his ear when he speaks Hannibal should be able to feel his breath.  “There’s one I know you’ll love.”  

_Flip_

The room he finds himself in is so dark after the light of Will’s Wolf Trap kitchen that for a moment, Hannibal can only blink.  There are only two sources of light, here—a crackling fireplace and a Christmas tree, its lights fading intermittently between a myriad of colors and cool white.  Will leans on the mantle, disheveled and clearly freshly showered.  He’s so beautiful it hurts, a sharp hook in Hannibal’s stomach that draws him forward. 

His flannel pajama pants hang low on his hips, the button up shirt he’s thrown on but left open above them clearly only a meager attempt at dressing until he goes to bed.  A vague measure against the cold, perhaps.  In the background, Hannibal can hear the click of dog nails on the floor. 

Hannibal emerges from an out of sight kitchen with two mugs, beautifully painted red snowflakes scattered across both.  The lust and naked adoration in Hannibal’s eyes are utterly familiar, as is the way he hands Will his cup.  Slow, touching a little more than he needs to but not so overt as to cross a line he hasn’t been expressly invited over.  Whether the status of their relationship has veered into the romantic or not, these two aren’t sleeping together, not yet.  He’s about to open his mouth to comment when the other Hannibal beats him to breaking the silence. 

“Mexican hot chocolate, made from a recipe I obtained during my years at school.  A warm, soothing drink, given more backbone by the spice of the pepper.  It made for an excellent studying aid in the winter.” 

True, and absolutely not the reason he was serving it to Will.  Watching from behind their veil with a Will who was already his, Hannibal didn’t fight the urge to comment.  “It’s also an aphrodisiac.  The Aztecs were known to consume at least a cup before engaging in extended sexual encounters.” 

Will’s snort of laughter was choked, short enough to leave Hannibal slightly ruffled.  Will never fully appreciated the efforts Hannibal had put into seducing him. 

“Of course it is.”

“I wouldn’t think you’d be opposed.” 

“I’m not, and neither is he.”  By the fire, Will sips his chocolate with his eyes still on Hannibal’s over the rim of the mug.  He may not understand the purpose in what he’s been given, but it’s a look Hannibal recognizes, though _this_ Hannibal hasn’t likely had a chance yet to fully learn its implications.  He’s not opposed, not in the slightest.  “I’m just a little entertained that it’s more logical to you to give me aphrodisiac hot chocolate and hope it inspires me to fuck you than it is to just kiss me.”

“Seduction should be subtle.  Skipping ahead for the sake of expediency in a relationship never consummated is crass.” 

“And yet, if I’d blown you in your office in Baltimore I doubt the word ‘crass’ would have been anywhere near how you chose to describe it.” 

Hannibal’s mind catches on the image, the sense memory his body conjures at the thought.  He would have likely been settled in his chair, across from Will’s, Will suddenly close to kneel between his thighs.  It takes little effort to put Will there, blue eyes looking up at him with a glimmer that belies he knows some measure of the power he holds.  It’s worth noting, though, that the Will he conjures _there_ doesn’t feel as real as this one.  None of his stand-ins ever do—not in his mind palace, not in his dreams, not anywhere. 

The thought is sobering.  Hannibal turns enough to study him, the gentle amusement on his face as he watches the men by the fire, the fall of his curls, the set of his shoulders.  There is weariness in there, sadness no place they’ve been has touched. 

Hannibal only remembers he hasn’t answered until Will turns to find him watching, eyebrows raised in question to encourage him to go on. 

“Whether I would have called it crass or not is beside the point.  You do much that goes unremarked.”

“Is that your polite way of calling me rude, Hannibal?” 

The need to kiss him, to _know_ what and where he is is almost overwhelming.  To fight it, Hannibal turns back to the fire, drifts closer to the circle of light around it before he answers.  “It’s an observation; take it how you will.”  Before Will can question him, he nods toward the floor where the two of them have settled and asks one of his own.  “Where did these two leave our timeline?”

“After Dolarhyde.  They went north to Canada, on to Iceland.  They’ve been living in this cabin over a year.  They just got back from procuring their rather unconventional Christmas dinner.  As you can see, it’s been exhausting work.” 

He can see, so well he can feel the sting of it cutting like wire as it tightens around his throat.  Sore from the struggle, Will has set his half-drunk chocolate to the side to lay down and let Hannibal have access to massage the strained muscles in his back.  He’s removed his shirt; his back bare beneath Hannibal’s hands and lit with the low glow of tree and fire that makes the moment all the more intimate, hushed and warm.  From above, he can see the near desperate longing in his own eyes, the unmistakable bulge that betrays he’s already hard.  For all his need, his focus on Will is intense, his skilled hands roving firm past Will’s shoulders to knead at any tension he finds. 

“Lower.”  Hannibal doesn’t realize his commentary has left his mouth until he feels the vibration, swallows and lets himself keep going, unheard.  “A little lower, and left.”  Will casts no shadow, but Hannibal feels him just behind his shoulder all the same.  “You carry your tension there.”

“And you find it.  I know.” 

They wait in silence until this Hannibal finds it too, until Will moans beneath his hands.  It’s a restrained sound, considering, but though short it’s warm and deep and full of pleasure and for a version of Hannibal who’s never heard anything of the kind, the look on his face is almost as incandescent as if Will had moaned his name. 

The lights are too bright, the room too close.  Unwilling to look any longer, Hannibal turns away.  Across the room in a dark doorway, a shaggy white dog is stretched out, eyes closed.  Everything here has a place but for the two of them standing in the middle of it, intruding. 

“Why did you bring me here, Will?”  His throat burns through the question, and after. 

“I’ll tell you.  Let’s take a walk.” 

_Flip_

The street is empty, the houses dark.  The only lights to guide their way come from the nearly full moon above and the Christmas lights from the yards.  Rainbow bulbs, reindeer.  A bear, before a fire.  He didn’t pay much notice to them before, but the images ring as familiar to Hannibal’s mind. 

Will walks with his head tilted up, chest expanding wide as if he could breathe hard enough in this bizarre state to draw proper air into his lungs again.  “I wasn’t sure what had happened to me at first, but I think I figured it out.  See, I thought…”  He looks to Hannibal, a glance that lingers, visibly drinking him in.  “At first, I thought it was just a chance to say goodbye.  I wanted that, for you, but you wouldn’t wake up and then…I found I had a much more unique vantage point than I expected.  But the thing is—“ 

They stop together, as in sync here as they’ve ever been. 

“—what I learned, from seeing all that potential is that I was right about us, in Florence.  We…blur and tangle at so many edges it becomes impossible to extricate us; we’re everywhere.  With Abigail in Italy, married and living in Baltimore…even our own efforts to sabotage ourselves don’t make a dent; we’re drawn back after every conceivable separation, and it doesn’t seem that strange from there to think that maybe we’ve done this a thousand times.”  Will’s face is tilted toward him, blue and white light captured in his eyes.  “Maybe we stood at the gates of Troy and you burned my body.” 

Discounting the remark on the beauty of their kill all those years ago on the cliffside, it’s probably the most romantic thing Will has ever said to him.  Of the two of them, he’s not usually the one to wax poetic.  “You may have just won the argument that you are no coma dream.  I wouldn’t have dared put such words in your mouth.”  Or might have tried, only to have them come out false, too layered in his own voice.  This had sounded like no one but Will, utterly unique, surprising as ever.  “Is that our fate in this world, as you see it?  Am I always to be left with your body?”  A world with a Will he can’t permanently keep sounds vaguely like a circle of hell, though it’s better by enormous strides than a world with no Will at all. 

“I don’t know.  I don’t know how it ends, or where we’d go from here if you stayed.  All I do know is that you don’t have to die for me; you don’t.  You can go back, wake up and give them hell.”  The smile that tugs at his mouth then is the first to tilt the corners of his eyes, to leave them bright.  “Whatever happens to us after this, I think I’m meant to wait for you, and I’ll do it.  It doesn’t have to be now.”

If he goes back, he can have the satisfaction of killing Jack with his hands, hunting down the officers who fired on Will and flaying them alive.  He could remove their teeth, their tongues, their eyes.  By the time death took them beyond his reach he could have ensured they felt some small portion of his pain.  He could find Alana and call in the interest her debt accrued when Will died for the sake of it.  He would not lack for options, if he returns. 

It’s attractive, distantly, but weighed against the man looking up at him it’s nothing, nothing at all. 

Hannibal’s hands come to cup Will’s face with no hesitation, his kisses soft on his forehead, his cheekbones, the tip of his nose.  Will’s mouth is warm beneath his, accepting, more real than anything he’s felt since he opened his eyes. 

Will clings to him, arms hooked around Hannibal’s neck to keep close as he kisses him again, lingers after to share breath until theirs matches.  The hand that clenches at the back of Hannibal’s neck feels painfully tight, a powerful reminder of the last time they’d held on against the current.  For all his words, it’s in his hands and his arms and the steady rise and fall of his chest that wrapped around each other like this is exactly where he wanted to be.  Hannibal feels oddly weightless, freshly anchored. 

Piece by piece, light by light, the street fades.

_We were in the gold room where everyone finally gets what they want, so I said_ What do you want, sweetheart? _and you said_ Kiss me.

_-Richard Siken_


End file.
